Arabs, Muslims are right at home in the U.S. / They've been here since Luis de Torres stepped ashore with Columbus

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, October 9, 2005

The newly constructed Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, MI.special to Chronicle by Brian Widdis.

The newly constructed Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, MI.special to Chronicle by Brian Widdis.

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The newly constructed Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, MI.special to Chronicle by Brian Widdis.

The newly constructed Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, MI.special to Chronicle by Brian Widdis.

Arabs, Muslims are right at home in the U.S. / They've been here since Luis de Torres stepped ashore with Columbus

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As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Karen Hughes is trying her best to convince the Muslim world that the United States is misperceived. The other day, she addressed Egyptian students at American University in Cairo. Hughes, who helped get George W. Bush elected to the presidency, told the collegians that "the heart of the American dream" is "You can work hard, you can get an education, and you have an opportunity to improve yourselves."

But her generalities bypassed the best argument: that the United States is home to an increasingly significant -- and politically powerful -- Arab and Muslim community.

An estimated 6 million Muslims and 3.5 million Arabs live in the United States. (There is overlap between these two groups -- not all Arabs are Muslims, and fewer than 20 percent of Muslims are Arab). The numbers suggest a rich American story:

Arabs and Muslims are an integral part of the United States, having immigrated here since its founding. Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria with an Arabic-speaking interpreter, Luis de Torres.

Generations have been born and raised in the United States, and, like Jews and Italians and Irish, have adopted American values: hard work, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Arabs and Muslims believe in democracy, and millions of them would die to defend it.

Hughes did introduce her Cairo audience to her deputy, Dina Powell, an Egyptian-born American who speaks Arabic. Powell, who is Christian, emigrated to the United States with her parents when she was 4. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Powell "the embodiment of what it means to be an American and to be part of a multiethnic democracy."

But in Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Powell took a backseat to Hughes, a former TV journalist who faced tough questions about the United States' role in Iraq, and other subjects.

"I understand that many of the concerns are deep seated," Hughes admitted to reporters. "I'm probably not going to change many minds."

If Hughes wants to change minds, she has an unplayed trump card. Arab and Muslim Americans are achieving breakthroughs in this country they couldn't have imagined a generation ago.

Look at Los Angeles, where the new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, was elected with the support of Iranian Americans.

Look at last year's presidential election, in which candidate Ralph Nader could boast of his Arab American roots.

You can see the connections between the two worlds at work in Los Angeles, where more than 500,000 Iranian Americans live in a city they call "Tehrangeles." It is the largest concentration of Iranians outside Iran.

This summer, I sat down with Ali Akbar Helmi, an Iranian American who operates a Persian carpet store on Westwood Boulevard near UCLA. As you walk through Helmi's stretch of Los Angeles, you see that most of the stores have signs in Persian. Most of the people who run these establishments fled Iran around the time of Tehran's 1979 revolution.

Near his desk, next to photos of his children, Helmi has an image of Villaraigosa, who held one of his many lucrative fundraisers in Helmi's rug emporium.

Speaking to me in his office, Helmi said, "I was responsible to register 5,000 people for the election. We, as a community, came here 25 to 30 years ago, and all this time, the Persian community wasn't aware they should get involved in the political system. We are 10 percent of the population of Los Angeles, but we are more than 20 percent of the economic power of this city. If you go to downtown Los Angeles, more than 30 percent of all property owners are Persian. We are a big engine of economic power in this town."

In Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, 1 out of 3 residents is Arab. Arabs and Muslims have lived in Dearborn for more than 100 years, moving there in different waves, including the early 1900s, when the Ford Motor Co. recruited factory workers from Yemen and other Arab countries. In the greater Detroit area, more than 500,000 Arabs and Muslims reside.

Dearborn's $15 million Arab American National Museum has given U.S. Arabs a chance to say, "Here is our culture and our history as you've never seen it before." Some of the history should be familiar to non-Arabs. The photos of famous Arab Americans, for example, feature such figures as the radio personality Casey Kasem, the actor Danny Thomas and the poet Khalil Gibran.

Gibran, who emigrated from Lebanon to the United States, is best known for "The Prophet," his palm-size collection of poems, which has sold more than 5 million copies in the United States since it was first published in 1923. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush are fans of Gibran, and so, too, was Elvis Presley, who had a copy of "The Prophet" on his bedroom table the night he died at his Graceland mansion in 1977.

In the past decade, only one other Muslim poet has come close to matching Gibran's influence in the United States: Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi. This scholar from Afghanistan is best known by his Westernized name, Rumi.

Since the early 1990s, Rumi's books have sold more than 1 million copies in this country, making him -- seven centuries after his death in Konya, Turkey -- the most popular poet in the United States.

Is this well known in the Arab and Muslim world? Do they know that the World Trade Center destroyed on Sept. 11 was designed by a man (Minoru Yamasaki) who incorporated Muslim architecture into its base? I wrote about this connection last year for The Chronicle in a series that also explored the possible link between Muslim slaves and blues music.

It's these intimate cultural connections between Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, that are the most telling for most people, and I think I know why: Arab and Muslim culture ceases to become a "foreign" culture that is only prescribed for Arabs and Muslims.

Instead, "their" culture becomes "ours," too. These unifying factors include everything from food to words -- among the English words borrowed from Persian or Arabic are bazaar, admiral, alcohol, giraffe and safari.

Hughes' job of wooing the world would be easier if she told this American story. Instead of trying to spin the news, she could create a dialogue -- and that would be a welcome bit of good news for a change.